


The Gravity of Kings

by YourFadedGlory (HisNameWasAce)



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 02:34:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3364514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HisNameWasAce/pseuds/YourFadedGlory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were bonded for christ’s sake, <i>bonded</i>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Soulbonds weren’t meant to be broken, they weren’t something that could be thrown away or forgotten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gravity of Kings

**Author's Note:**

>   
> **Of all the people my heart could have chosen, it decided on a boy who didn't have enough room in his own heart to love someone like me.**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _-A.V._  
> 

Mario stared at the dotted line, a pen clutched in his trembling hand. Sweat beaded down his neck, the glaring fluorescent lights making his skin itch with a fever like heat. He glanced over the daunting packet frantically, eyeing the letters as they floated around uselessly on the pages, forming strings of words that he couldn’t comprehend. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized the doctor was talking to him. But his slow, cautious words seemed like nothing more than a haze of white noise, jumbled and fuzzy. For a moment Mario was convinced he’d gone deaf, every single sound in the room narrowed down to a sharp ringing in his ears that drowned out even the impatient tap of Jaromir’s pen against the sterile tabletop. 

They were bonded for christ’s sake, _bonded_. 

Soulbonds weren’t meant to be broken, they weren’t something that could be thrown away or forgotten. 

“Jaro…” He begged, the name broken and cracked as it fell from his lips. 

“Sign the damn papers, its that simple.” Jaromir snarled, his leg jackhammering up and down underneath the table. 

Mario bit back the wounded sound that threatened to burst from his throat, Jaromir’s words like white hot knives sinking into the soft flesh of his belly and twisting violently till it felt like he was going to vomit, or cry, or both. 

Distraught, he turned toward the doctor, a young man who looked like he desperately wished he could be anywhere else. His name tag said Garrett, Garrett Hawthorn. He didn’t have a job that any sane man would envy, but it was his job nonetheless. 

“Can’t, can’t you just do it?” Mario asked, knuckles white as he clutched at the pen. He couldn’t imagine consenting to this, to put it in writing that he’d actually agreed to have his bond severed. But maybe, maybe if they could just rip it away like a bandaid...it wouldn’t feel so much like he was dying. 

“Bonds are part of a precarious science sir, a dangerous one that is still largely undeveloped. Because there is such a great risk to patients, the law requires that both bondmates must not only be fully informed of the procedure, but also willingly consent to it.” Garrett clarified, despairingly professional about the whole ordeal. 

Glancing across the miles of stainless steel tabletop that separated him from Jaromir, Mario willed the man to meet his eyes, desperate for some sort of solace. But Jaromir kept his vacant stare fixed on the opposite wall, and all Mario ever saw of his bondmate was his warped reflection on the tabletop, the impatient clack of his pen against metal pounding in his ears like the grating tick of a clock counting down their final moments. 

Staring down at the pen in his hand, the way it quivered in his sweat slick palms, Mario knew there wasn’t anything more he could do. His nervous energy bled away with the ink as he reluctantly scrawled his name across one dotted line after another, leaving an aching sense of hollowness in his chest. The normally smooth loops of his signature made jagged and sharp by the robotic jerks of his wrist. When it was done, the pen sitting idle on cold steel, Mario had only a vague idea of what he’d actually done. 

He’d signed away his life so that Jaromir could have his own. 

A life without Pittsburgh, without the Pens, but most of all, a life without him. 

\- - - - -

A nurse took his blood pressure, and tsked with disapproval. She skimmed over his medical files with a small crinkle of concern, double checking his allergy to penicillin before handing him a folded paper gown with orders to strip. From one corridor to another, Mario followed her, feeling terrifyingly small amidst the bustling doctors and looming machinery. 

His barefeet curled in aversion to the frigid linoleum, hands shaking at his sides as he struggled to even out his breathing. Gooseflesh prickled across his skin despite his fevered flush, like his body was already trying to tear itself in two, the terror in his veins slowly losing out to the sedatives being pumped into his bloodstream one syringe at a time. 

They made him feel disconnected, as if he was only watching everything from a distance. Mario hardly registered the hands that were pressing sensors to his chest, guiding his body down onto a rolling table and strapping down his wrists and his ankles and his head, restricting even the slightest of movements. 

They put the mouthguard in last, the rubber stiff against his teeth. With cocktail of sedatives pumped into him, Mario wasn’t exactly sure why he needed it. 

By the time Jaro joined him, in similar restraints, but on the opposite side of the table--Mario could hardly tell which way was up. 

The overhead fluorescent lights were a blur, the squeak of metal a distant white noise as the table was wheeled into the separation chamber. 

Once inside, a divider made of carefully woven metal links was brought down between them. Mario desperately wiggled his fingers, managing to force a few of them through the links, searching for some sort of contact. The skin he grazed, on the back of Jaro’s hand was clammy with sweat, but sent a pleasant warmth radiating up his fingers and just past his wrist. 

“Jaro…” 

“Jaromir please… _please_.” Mario begged, the words slightly slurred. 

They still had time to reconsider, to take it all back, and make things work. 

They could make things work, he was sure of it. 

If Jaro ever said anything in reply, and Mario liked to imagine that he did, the words would have been lost beneath the whir of machinery. 

For a few moments it didn’t hurt, then he became acutely aware of the purpose of the mouthguard. 

It felt like someone was taking a rusted blade to the inside of his skull, painstakingly sawing out every last bit of Jaro that lingered with him. No thought was spared, no memory left intact. 

Sedatives be damned, Mario was sure he was going to bite straight through the plastic, tears leaking involuntarily out of the corner of each eye as he choked back screams. 

There was no use in trying to fight off the procedure, it was far too late for that. But he was determined to keep something, _anything_ , for himself. Mario latched desperately to one memory, just a single moment he ached to hold onto. 

_They’d just taken a beating from the Caps on home ice, no one was particularly happy. Mario shuffled into the locker room and eased down into his stall. Every movement sent a bright lance of pain jolting up his spine, the muscles of his back knotted tight and throbbing from the strain of brutal checks and hard skating. Jon was coming over to help him untie his skates, because bending over was proving to be especially difficult. Jaro beat him to it though, waving off the trainer with a few flicks of his wrist._

_“You too young to be so old,” Jaro chirped lightly, going down on one knee for easier access to the knotted laces. Mario had just watched him work, nimble fingers loosening every criss-crossed section until each skate could be pulled off with relative ease. “You lucky I always be here to help.” The thick accent felt inexplicably warm flowing off Jaro’s tongue._

_“You’re just buttering me up so I’ll play scrabble with you,” Mario objected, but with a grin that belied his gratitude and a willingness to indulge the younger man._

_“It’s working.” Jaro pointed out, his smile lopsided and bright._

That was the image Mario clung to--Jaromir, young, impossibly happy, and still _his_. It was the last thing he knew before he slipped away from reality, into the blissful oblivion of sleep. 

When he woke, it felt like his heart had literally been broken. The vital organ stuttering erratically behind the cage of his ribs. But the doctors don’t seem to notice so Mario filed it away as a figment of his imagination, a phantom pain that belonged solely in his head, where Jaro’s mind had left gaping holes that echoed with his absence. 

Three days after the severing, while Jaro strolled the streets of D.C., flashing his blank wrist like it was a gold medal, Mario finally found the courage to peel away the bandages on his own. 

The flesh beneath the gauze should have been blank, the name the once looped across his skin in charcoal black, now erased. 

Only, Mario’s wrist wasn’t blank. 

A scar lingered, raw, pink, and slightly raised. 

_Jaromir_ , still etched permanently into his skin.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp.
> 
> I've been combing through my unfinished work and I dug this up. There was supposed to be more to it, I might add a little something later on, but for now it is what it is.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are much appreciated.


End file.
